I wish JSON supported comments, but I don’t really understand your criticism. You say:
> Without a standard format for comments, you have no reason whatsoever to expect the ad-hoc comments in a JSON file made by anyone who isn't you to be styled like JavaScript comments.
But, since comments are not supported in JSON, you can expect JSON from external sources to contain no comments whatsoever.
That’s precisely Crockford’s point: he didn’t want the format to have a comment syntax that works across different parties so that the only way to use comments is internally, i.e. with a custom comment syntax that you strip before interacting with external sources.
> Without a standard format for comments, you have no reason whatsoever to expect the ad-hoc comments in a JSON file made by anyone who isn't you to be styled like JavaScript comments.
But, since comments are not supported in JSON, you can expect JSON from external sources to contain no comments whatsoever.
That’s precisely Crockford’s point: he didn’t want the format to have a comment syntax that works across different parties so that the only way to use comments is internally, i.e. with a custom comment syntax that you strip before interacting with external sources.